Just as Luther raged against Rome, so neoclassicism – fine examples of which are to be found in Ireland – articulated a reaction to the 18th century's florid Rococo style, writes ROBERT O'BYRNE
IN THE LATE 1930s Italian cultural historian Mario Praz visited Ireland, an experience he would recall in his seminal book On Neoclassicism, originally published in Florence in 1940. He remembered how, "At Waterford, on an evening of pouring rain, I found myself in the entrance hall of an hotel, which was lit by a bronze light of Etruscan design, between pale green walls decorated in the manner of the Adam brothers . . . The proprietress took me into the ballroom, which had a great Adam ceiling with a circle of rays in the white and pale green . . . "
Here in Ireland we are inclined to refer to “Georgian architecture” as though everything built between the late 17th and mid-19th centuries was one homogenous whole. In fact, as Praz observed on his visit, throughout that long period the country’s decorative styles were subject to the same evolutionary forces experienced elsewhere in Europe, albeit tempered by circumstances peculiar to Ireland. Aesthetically the Georgian period was no more static than any other, and while certain elements – the deployment of pillars, pilasters and pediments – might have remained fairly constant across almost two centuries, within this broad framework can be found an almost infinite variety of form. Last week, a conference at the National Gallery explored the characteristics of one particular aspect of Georgian design, the form Praz had found especially appealing here: neoclassicism.
There are many reasons why neoclassicism should be of interest, not least an ability to engage in self-rejuvenation, something that has helped to keep it in vogue when other styles have faded. Neoclassicism was born, and has since been regularly reborn, out of a reforming zeal; it represents the puritan strain in the religion of architecture. As now understood, its origins date to the mid-18th century and can most simply be summarised as articulating a reaction to the period’s florid rococo style. Playful, extravagant and intentionally excessive, rococo achieved considerable popularity in Ireland, as can be seen by an inspection of the interiors of houses such as Russborough, Co Wicklow, with its profligate plasterwork by the Lafranchini brothers.
Such decorative recklessness is never going to be to everyone’s taste, and a counter-movement was inevitable. Like Luther’s outburst against Rome, it took the form of a demand that accretions be stripped away and primary principles reinstated. A pan-European movement, neoclassicism was by no means confined to architecture or even the visual arts: a similar movement took place in music, for example, led by Gluck and his adherents. Gluck’s first great reformist opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, received its premiere in 1762, around the same time that Scottish-born architect Robert Adam began to put his neoclassical principles into practice.
Like others of his persuasion, Adam argued for the need to return to the origins of classicism as found in surviving pre-Christian Greek and Roman buildings. Unlike rococo, neoclassicism is design based on the concept of self-restraint and relying on the purest Graeco-Roman models for its inspiration. Thanks to the dissemination across Europe of architectural engravings based on measured drawings of extant examples, this information now became widely available for the first time. Thus architects unable to travel to Italy or Greece could examine the ancient world’s edifices in considerable detail and base their own work on classical precedents. At the same time, archaeological work had been taking place at Pompeii and Herculaneum and revealing details not only of Roman domestic design but also its interior decoration, including the lavish use of fresco painting, with consequences on 18th-century decorative schemes. The finest example of this style in Ireland is the Long Gallery at Castletown House, Co Kildare, its walls covered during the early 1770s with Pompeian-style murals by Charles Ruben Riley and Thomas Ryder.
Robert Adam never visited Ireland and nor indeed did Sir William Chambers, despite his designing a number of significant neoclassical buildings here. Among Adam’s Irish contributions the most important to survive are the interiors he produced for Headfort, Co Meath; its immense Eating Parlour has just been thoroughly restored thanks to funding from the Irish Georgian Society and provides an excellent idea of Adamesque neoclassicism, with its chaste plasterwork and painted medallions by Antonio Zucchi.
Adam’s involvement with Headfort dates from the early 1770s, by which time Ireland’s finest neoclassical building was nearing completion. Now almost engulfed by suburban housing, the Casino at Marino was originally designed by Chambers for the Earl of Charlemont as a pleasure pavilion in the grounds of the latter’s residence on the outskirts of Dublin. Taking the form of a Greek Cross and measuring just 50sq ft to the outer columns, from the exterior the Casino gives an impression of holding a single interior space. In fact it contains 16 rooms spread over three storeys.
Neoclassicism in its chilliest incarnation can be seen at Castle Coole, Co Fermanagh, a vast mansion built in the closing years of the 18th century for the first Earl of Belmore to the designs of James Wyatt, another English-based architect. Fronted in Portland stone, Castle Coole is imposing but uninviting, and displays one of neoclassicism’s less attractive features: a tendency towards aloofness.
The career of Francis Johnston, however, demonstrates the versatility of neoclassicism. Originally from Armagh, Johnston worked for Thomas Cooley, an Englishman who had moved to Ireland after winning a competition to design Dublin’s Royal Exchange (now City Hall), the capital’s first large-scale exercise in neoclassicism.
Johnston went on to have a highly successful career, during which he produced an eclectic range of buildings, from the grandly neoclassical GPO, to Dublin Castle’s neo-gothic Chapel Royal. Likewise Johnston’s near contemporary Sir Richard Morrison could turn his hand to neoclassicism for Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in Dublin, or gothic for the revamp of Castle Howard in Co Wicklow. Curiously, both Johnston and Morrison played a part in transforming the Earl of Longford’s home, Tullynally in Co Westmeath, from plain classical house into fantasy castle.
We should not necessarily lament neoclassicism’s failure to win unswerving loyalty in this country. Ever since the time of Percier and Fontaine, official architects to Napoleon Bonaparte, the neoclassical style, with its evocation of the absolutist glory that was ancient Rome, has always had a special appeal for despots. In the last century it found favour with both Soviet and fascist regimes; Hitler’s pet architect Albert Speer drew up plans for the redesign of Berlin – due to be given the new name Welthauptstadt Germania (World capital Germany) – as a city of monstrous neoclassical structures. By comparison, a fondness among this state’s founding fathers for the curlicues of neo-Celtic architecture seems quaint – and far less likely to lead to illusions of world domination.